The data is mixed. Some are numbers and some are text here is an example:
NAME MRN ACCESSION CULTURE LOCATION REC
Smith, Joe (0000)1111111 02-000-1234 C FUN REF 01A5E 03APR06

Now that you mentioned it is just a marker, the field seems to sort fine,
the date field won't swith to a different format, which is the only problem.
If I try to give a report with a different format people freak out, I guess
it is just too hard to read a date. Thanks for the help, I think I can just
change the date by going text to columns and then putting it back together
using the =right function and omitting the leading apostrophe.

"Ron Rosenfeld" wrote:

On Tue, 08 May 2007 12:38:01 -0400, Ron Rosenfeld
wrote:

That symbol is merely a text marker -- it marks the contents of the cell as
being text.

It could also be a Lotus left-justified label marker if the transition
navigation keys option is checked.

Excel apparently puts a leading single quote in text cells when populated from
SQL (and perhaps from other sources). But the character doesn't print, and
shouldn't affect anything other than signifying that the data is textual.

It can be removed by several methods.

What is the data like? (i.e. is it numeric to be treated as numeric?, text to
be treated as text? numeric to be treated as text?, etc)?






Also, if it is a number, is the number more than 15 digits long?
--ron